After Shelest was appointed
First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) in 1963, he set out to run Ukraine with a degree of independence from Moscow, and to develop the republic's economy and encourage Ukrainian culture. It was during his tenure that construction began on the four nuclear plants at
Chernobyl. He antagonised the Soviet leader,
Nikita Khrushchev, who publicly upbraided Shelest during a visit to Hungary over late delivery of Ukrainian equipment, then remarked: "Look how glum he is - just as if a hedgehog had been rammed down his throat." In November 1964, when Khrushchev was removed from office, Shelest was promoted to full membership of the Presidium (later renamed the
Politburo). Shelest began his rule at a time of significant cultural shifts in Ukrainian society, as it began to increasingly distance itself from Russia and assert its unique identity. Regarded within the party as a localist, Shelest was viewed by various sectors of the public as either a supporter of increased Ukrainian autonomy within the Soviet Union or a typical Soviet bureaucrat. In a statement later attributed to him by historian Roman Solanchyk, Shelest said that he was "not
Lazar Kaganovich" and did not rule under Ukraine in "the times of Stalin," noting himself as an opponent of hardliners. Historian
Taras Kuzio has argued that Shelest was the leader of a revived
national communist sect of the Communist Party of Ukraine after the group had previously been destroyed in the
Great Purge. According to Kuzio, the national communist group was later led by
Leonid Kravchuk, who oversaw the transition from Soviet to independent Ukraine. A supporter of the
Sixtier cultural movement and the
Khrushchev Thaw, Shelest's policies brought greater prominence to the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian culture in public life, with the party echelons actively supporting such developments. An ultimately-unrealised 1965 plan, later leaked through
samizdat, called for Ukrainian to eventually replace Russian as the language of instruction in higher education. The extent to which Shelest personally was involved in supporting the Sixtiers and other nationally minded Ukrainians, many of whom later formed the core of Ukraine's
Soviet dissidents, remains in dispute. Shelest's policy of greater autonomy for Ukraine was also reflected in economic spheres, as he sought to decentralise economic management to the republican level. He also argued for Ukraine to become economically sovereign from the broader Soviet Union in 1965, a move which alarmed Soviet leadership. However, he was criticised by Ukrainian intellectuals such as
Viacheslav Chornovil for his role in the
1965–1966 Ukrainian purge, which led to the arrest of several Sixtiers. The core intention of Shelest's policies was to improve the popularity of the Communist Party among Ukrainians, following the extreme unpopularity of Stalinist rule in Ukraine. Such plans had fruitful results: by 1971 KPU membership was 2.5 million, and annually increasing at double the rate of the Union average. == Prague Spring ==